Introduction

We are four volunteers for the Urumaya 4.0 project of AIESEC in JLC. We will be visiting several industries in Sri Lanka about which we will write a blog, make a small documentary and have a photo exhibition.

Today on 19th January 2018 we visit a pottery industry. Located in Kaduwela, Colombo, Sri Lanka. This factory was build in 2010 and now has seven employers. The forms of the pottery made are flower vase, bowl, plate, bank, traditional stove, cooking tools and many more. The price ranges from Rs. 1,5- Rs. 2000. This pottery is also exported countries like: Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. The shape of pottery which is most ordered is cooking pots. In 10 hour, they can make 4000 diyas. On this blog, we will give information about how to make pottery.

These are the steps of how to make pottery:

They use clay from paddy field

Turn on the meer machine (machine fuel from oil)

Put clay into the machine, after the clay comes out from the machine it has become smooth and changed color.

They also use yellow clay to make red pottery

After that, they put clay again into meer machine again to make it even softer.

To make the clay smoother, they step on it.

Then, they use Sakaporuwamachine to make different shapes from the clay. They form the pot shape with their hands while adding a little water for easy.

After that, they use a rope to lift the pot from the machine.

They put the pottery under sunlight for 2 hours until the color changes to dark brown. During the rain season, they need 1 day for drying.

And then smoothing process, they use plastic and metal to smoothen the pottery surface.

After that kill process, they put the pottery in an oven for 10 hours until the color changes into red brick color. (They use wood for burning)

In the fireplace, they use broken pots and straw to put on the pottery to keep the heat inside.

After 10 hours, the pottery is ready to be moved and sold.

In one month, they can produce and sell 300.000 diyas. In making pottery, there are many obstacles, such as: difficult to find firewood for the oven, the weather condition for the drying and they need a permit to take clay from paddy fields.

We learned a lot from this trip to the pottery industry. We hope you also learned about it from our blog. That is the last blog that we made. From this blog, we hope this is useful for all of you. See you next time.